


Like a Storm Inside

by sinfuldesire_archivist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Drama, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-27
Updated: 2006-08-27
Packaged: 2018-09-03 06:48:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8701651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinfuldesire_archivist/pseuds/sinfuldesire_archivist
Summary: Sam wants to take the college boards. This follows The Party of Almost Was and The Truth at Seventeen.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the Sinful Desire archivists: this story was originally archived at [Sinful-Desire.org](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Sinful_Desire). To preserve the archive, we began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in November 2016. We e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [Sinful Desire collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/sinfuldesire/profile).

**Title:** Like a Storm Inside  
**Author:** merepersiflage  
**Pairings:** Sam/Dean  
**Rating:** NC-17  
**Category:** slash, angst   
**Word Count:** 8200  
**Summary:** Sam wants to take the college boards.   
**Warnings:** incest, graphic m/m sex, language. Sam is seventeen, and the story mentions that they started younger.   
**Disclaimer:** I tried to tempt them with a little trail of Lucky Charms, but they're still not mine.   
**Notes:** This follows [The Party of Almost Was](http://merepersiflage.livejournal.com/7564.html#cutid1) and [The Truth at Seventeen](http://merepersiflage.livejournal.com/8331.html#cutid1). The usual suspects did a lot of extra handholding and helping. The title is from the Heather Nova song “Blood of Me.”  
  
  
  
Oh, god, Sam hated to throw up.   
  
He clutched the toilet rim, his sides heaving. What if he’d taken too much? He felt worse than he had when he’d drunk all that whiskey two weeks ago. He wouldn’t be able to function tomorrow if he kept this up, and it would all be a huge waste.  
  
“Sammy?” Dad yelled through the door. “How’re you doin’?”  
  
“All right. I just—” The effort of talking made him puke again. Sweat dripped in his eyes as he sank to his knees, the cold white porcelain soothing despite the smell. He wiped his face on his shirt.   
  
“Dean, have you been sick lately?”  
  
“No, sir.” Dean’s voice sounded cold, like he knew. But he couldn’t know, because Sam’d been damn careful. He’d measured the dose into a paper cup and put the bottle back in the first aid kit.   
  
“I’m coming in, Sam.” Dad edged around the sink and Sam looked up at him. “Have you been feeling sick?”  
  
Sam was glad he was saved from lying face to face. “No. It just hit me.” He spit into the toilet.   
  
Dad put a hand on his head, and Sam felt even more like crap. He had to do this. Dad didn’t understand about the intractability of SAT test dates and how hard it had been to get a fee waiver, how much pride Sam’d had to suck up to tell the guidance counselor he didn’t even have a lousy forty bucks for the test.   
  
Another wave hit him and he was hunched over the bowl, miserable, shaking, sweating, and crying from the burn of bile. Dad held his head.   
  
“Feel like it’s gonna get worse?”  
  
“No.” Sam whispered.   
  
“All right.” Dad flushed the toilet and went back into the hall, shutting the door behind him.   
  
Sam had to strain to hear the conversation over the rushing water. He shifted until he could plaster his ear against the pressboard.   
  
“Dean, take your duffle and Sam’s out of the car.”  
  
“Dad. . . yes, sir.”  
  
“It’s probably just a routine haunting, but I don’t want to leave it any longer. I’ll be back by Sunday, maybe even tomorrow. Call me if Sammy gets worse.”  
  
“Yes, sir.” Dean’s voice was pitched low in that too quiet way he got when he was really, really furious. “Dad, call us if you need us. Sam’ll be fine tomorrow.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
Sam couldn’t stop the dry heaves for another half hour and even then he curled up in a back breaking semi-circle on the bathroom floor, afraid to get too far away from the toilet. He didn’t know how long he stayed there, but he was just thinking about crawling into bed, when the door opened and Dean came in.   
  
Sam sat up.   
  
Dean looked at him for a long minute, then shoved two things into his chest. Sam clutched them, glancing down, free of that awful stare. His fingers closed around the syrup of ipecac bottle, but it was the other thing that really made him wince. The local newspaper with the announcement for the time and location of the SAT’s circled in thick black marker.  
  
“If anything happens to Dad, I’ll kill you.”  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Sam finally crawled to bed, slept and woke up at 2:28 A.M. Dean’s bed was empty. He stared at the ceiling for a while, the blue light from the television filtering down the hall to shift the patterns of darkness. He couldn’t fall back asleep, and he needed to. He was taking the most important test of his freaking life tomorrow, and he was going to do it with an upset stomach and zero sleep because life as a Winchester was just that jacked.   
  
He’d known Dean would probably figure it out by the time he went to the test, but he’d thought he’d get a chance to explain. He got up and went down the hall. Dean was stretched out on the couch, legs hanging over the end, but he wasn’t asleep either. His eyes glittered in the light from the tv.  
  
He waited for Dean to speak, but of course he didn’t.   
  
“So you’re gonna stay out here tonight?”  
  
“Looks that way, Sammy.”  
  
“Dean—”  
  
“Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”  
  
Sam slung himself into the remaining chair. There was always that agonizing paradox (please let that word be on the test tomorrow) when Dad was out hunting alone. They both held the conviction that Dad was invulnerable at the same time they were sure that this time he wasn’t going to make it back.  
  
Sam swung his leg. “He’ll be fine. He said it was a routine haunting.”  
  
“He said ‘probably.’ If it was so routine, why the hell was he taking both of us, huh?”  
  
Sam didn’t have an answer for that. “He’ll be fine,” he repeated.   
  
“Yeah. Keep telling yourself that.”  
  
Sam listened to the guy in the infomercial rave about the amazing properties of the vacuum cleaner he was hawking. He could have used a little help cleaning up this mess.   
  
“Christ, Sam. That was a shitty thing to do.”  
  
Now that Dean was finally yelling at him, he perversely felt better. “I know, but I had to.”  
  
“You couldn’t have just asked? You had to fucking pretend to be happy about this trip? You know, Sam, the second you started packing without complaining I knew you were up to some kind of sneaky shit.”  
  
“Right. ‘Cause Dad would’ve let me stay.”  
  
“You don’t know that because you didn’t ask.”  
  
Dean would understand eventually. He always did. “Dean. It’s one hunt. This test—it could be my whole life.”  
  
“What?”  
  
Sam could feel the words rushing out of him as if he’d taken ipecac for the brain. “Dean, if I can get a good score on this test, then I can get into a decent college—with a scholarship—even with all the school I’ve missed.”  
  
“Sam—”  
  
And the words just kept leaping out, because Dean _had_ to understand. “What if a month from now we find the thing that killed Mom? Find it and kill it. I want there to be a choice for me and if I don’t take this test tomorrow—today—there won’t be.”  
  
Dean’s arm was hanging down off the couch, close enough for him to reach over and touch. He wanted Dean to feel him, to remember everything that had happened between them because this was it and it wasn’t how he’d planned it but nothing ever seemed to go according to his plans in his screwed up world. He slid off the chair and reached for Dean’s hand, and Dean pulled it back, his expressive face motionless.   
  
“You could go, too,” he whispered, but he could still hear himself over the noise of the infomercial, hear how much like begging that sounded. “We could—”  
  
“And this is how you plan to do it? Lying, faking, hell, _poisoning_ yourself just so you can get what you want?”  
  
“So I should be like you and never have what I want because of Dad?”  
  
The crowd on the infomercial gasped, but Sam could still hear his own heart pounding as those words cut the air between them.   
  
Dean made that laugh that wasn’t a laugh, that was a choking, strangled breath. “Yeah. Whatever. Go to bed, Sam.”  
  
It would have been much easier if Dean would yell at him again. He couldn’t think of how to explain that, to make it sound better, because whether Dean wanted to hear it or not it was the truth. Dean had gone still and quiet on the couch. Not sighing, not swinging his feet.   
  
“He’s always fine,” Sam said.   
  
At last Dean turned to face him. “Go on, Sammy. Don’t you have the most important test of your life to take?”  
  
 

* * *

  
  
Dean flipped through the channels, then muted it on color bars, just staring, fighting panic. Sam was still a teenager; he still wanted to fit in with everyone. And everyone else was taking the test. Sam was competitive, too. He’d want to know how he scored. But taking the college boards . . . It still didn’t mean he was definitely planning to leave . . . them.   
  
“Where ya goin?” Sammy sat on their bed, rumpled hand-me-down pajamas and chubby cheeks covered in breakfast, his chin sticking out like he’d try to poke you with it.   
  
“School.” Dean tied his sneakers.   
  
“Again?”  
  
“Yeah, Sammy. They have it everyday.” He went to get a washcloth.  
  
“But you don’t go everyday.” Sammy’s words were muffled under the scrub of the cloth.   
  
“No. I just have to go enough.”  
  
“Enough for what?”   
  
He couldn’t tell Sammy what Dad had told him. That if he didn’t go to school enough, people would think Dad wasn’t taking care of them and maybe take him and Sammy away. He threw the washcloth in the sink and came back to help Sammy get dressed.   
  
He pulled the pajama top over Sammy’s head.   
  
“I don’t like school,” Sammy whined through the material coming over his head.  
  
“You don’t even go.”  
  
“But you do and then I’m alone. And Dad doesn’t make skabettios like you do.”  
  
“School’s all right, Sammy. You’ll see when you go next year.”  
  
And really Dean didn’t mind school so much now that they did more than just play. He’d gotten tired of getting in trouble for taking the toys apart. But some of the stuff was interesting and if he got better at reading and writing he could help Dad with his book. And sometimes, even though it made him feel bad, kind of sick inside for wanting it, it felt good to be someplace else for a while. He loved taking care of Sammy, but sometimes it just got so hard to breathe when they were stuck somewhere for days with nothing to do.   
  
“Next year when I’m six?” Sammy held on to his shoulder for balance as Dean helped him into his pants.   
  
“No, you’ll still be five.”  
  
Sammy shrugged like it was still forever away. Dean fastened his buttons.   
  
“And,” Dean thought of the people who’d come to talk to them last week, “if you go to school you can be something like a doctor or a dinosaur dude.” He tossed Sam’s toy dinosaur at him.   
  
“Pal—e—on—tol—o—gist.” Sammy said, carefully hitting each part of the word.   
  
“Paleontologist.” Dean repeated just as carefully. He’d have to get the teacher to show him how to write that so he could show Sammy when he got home. Sammy was on a dinosaur kick.   
  
Sammy clutched the dinosaur and looked up at him. “But those things mean lots of school. Dad said doctors are expensive because they have to go to school for lots of years.”   
  
“Yeah. They have to go to college.”  
  
“College.” Sammy said the word like it was some kind of scary place full of monsters.   
  
“College isn’t bad either,” he sat next to Sammy. “It’s kind of like school, except you don’t take a bus, you live there.”  
  
“Live there?” Sammy’s eyes widened with horror and then filled with tears. “No, not live there. No you can’t, Dean. You can’t live at college.”  
  
“Sammy, it’s—”  
  
“No!” And it was on the edge of his baby shrieking and Dean grabbed him to shush him.  
  
“You’re going to wake up Dad.” Dean had heard Dad come in when it was just getting light out. He’d be up in a few hours but he wouldn’t like it if Sammy woke him up for no good reason.  
  
“Don’t care. You can’t go. You can’t leave. You have to live with me.” Sammy was sobbing now, soaking the shoulder of his shirt, his voice full of snot.   
  
Dean was going to have to change again before the bus came.   
  
“Sammy,” he rubbed his brother’s back, and Sammy crawled up into his lap. Dean sighed. “Sammy, college is a long way away. We’ll both be grown up by then.”  
  
“You can’t ever go. Dean, please. Don’t leave me.”  
  
“I won’t.”  
  
“You will. You wanna go to college. Please, don’t. Dean, please.”  
  
Dean’d been thinking about that. About what he might do. He could be a doctor, and that would help Dad because then he would fix him for free if he got hurt. But yeah, he’d have to go away to college. He could be a fireman and save people that way.   
  
“I won’t leave.”  
  
“Ever.” Sammy’s drippy face was leaking all over his neck now, and his body shook all over as he cried.   
  
Dean rubbed a hand up and down his back, but Sammy just kept crying. And Dean knew what it would take to calm him. One word and Sammy would believe him. Because he meant it. “Ever. Promise.”  
  
“Really?” He picked his head up from Dean’s shoulder.   
  
Dean nodded. Sammy wiped his snot on his own shirt, and Dean would have to hurry if he was going to get them both changed before the bus came.   
  
Dean came back to the present to the sound of Sam yakking in the bathroom. He had to admire Sam’s balls. His brother hated puking, control freak that he was, and that he would willingly suffer through it meant he was serious as shit about this, which just got that fear and anger all stirred up in his guts again. It had been a hell of a plan though, worthy of Dad, not that Dean was ever going to tell Sam that.   
  
He pushed to his feet and went in. Sam hugged the bowl, huddled on his knees. When Dean came in, he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. His face scrunched up as dry heaves hit him again.   
  
Dean sighed and filled a cup with water. He lowered it to Sam’s eye level.   
  
Sam just blinked at him through sweaty bangs.   
  
“Rinse your mouth.”  
  
Sam did, but spitting just got him puking again.   
  
Dean stroked his back, the motion half instinctive and reinforced with his recent memory, but the body he touched now was far from the same. Sammy had gone from a baby to be comforted to a brat kid to be teased and toughened to a gangly teen, and in the past year, to someone whose even casual touch had a different, _personal_ meaning and purpose, someone whose familiar body had become something to look at in hunger, need, desire. He was always conscious of Sam now, always aware of the heat of his tall body, lean muscle, quick-to-stir cock. Only when they were sparring or hunting did Sam’s body go back to the impersonal partner it had been since Dad taught him to help.   
  
“Dumbass. You shoulda just asked.”  
  
Sam shook again, fighting for control of his body, and Dean could see tears squeeze at the corner of his eyes.   
  
“Just relax, Sammy. C’mon.”   
  
Sam swayed under Dean’s hand, and Dean threaded his fingers up through his hair, pushing it off his hot damp neck. Sam seemed to be quieting.   
  
“That’s it.” And he couldn’t stop himself from pressing a kiss to that bare skin. He jerked himself up, hand back on Sam’s t-shirt, picking up the rhythm again.   
  
When Sam seemed about to fall asleep with his head in the bowl, Dean helped him to his feet. “Rinse,” he ordered.   
  
Sam swished and spat cautiously but he seemed able to keep from heaving again.   
  
Dean slung his arm around his shoulders and walked him across the hall, easing him gently onto his bed.   
  
He got him settled somewhat, Sam on his side with his hips cocked at an odd angle to keep all of him on the bed. Sam shut his eyes, and Dean turned to leave.   
  
“You aren’t staying?”  
  
Dean turned to look back at him. “No.”  
  
“Can you wait till I fall asleep?”   
  
Dean nodded and squeezed a fraction of his ass onto the bed so he could reach Sam’s back again. He ran his hand up and down until Sam was asleep.   
  
 

* * *

  
  
Dean was usually a far from cheerful morning person so Sam was shocked when he opened his eyes at 6:30 and found him standing over him with a giant soda and a McDonald’s bag.   
  
“Huh?” The food smelled surprisingly good. Sam sat up.  
  
Dean handed off the soda. “Drink up, it’ll settle your stomach.”  
  
“Dean, I’m not hung-over.”  
  
“Yeah but you look it. Same symptoms, same cure.”  
  
Dean had done the same thing for him two weeks ago, when he’d woken with a pounding head after Heather’s party. But that had been 1:00 in the afternoon. The idea that Dean had gotten up before six when there wasn’t even anything to kill stunned him.   
  
“Why are you doing this?” He sucked on the straw. The dark sugary fizz was a—his brain dug up another good SAT word—palliative to his queasy stomach.   
  
“Doin’ what?”  
  
“Helping me. After . . .” He jerked his chin toward the bathroom.   
  
“You’re my brother, Sam, even if you’re a selfish bastard sometimes. And you’re going to kick some ass on that test because that’s what we do.”  
  
“I’m sorry I lied.” He hadn’t really lied, just been . . . deceitful is to mendacious as . . . he rubbed his forehead.  
  
Dean ignored his apology. “Head hurt?”  
  
“A little.”   
  
Dean handed him a Tylenol and tossed the greasy bag between his legs. “If you think you can take it, I’ve got coffee strong enough to jumpstart a zombie brain.”  
  
After managing to not puke up the soda, or the egg, bacon and cheese biscuit—even after showering, Sam thought he might make it through the test. He went into the kitchen where Dean was waiting for him with coffee. Sam gingerly shook his head.   
  
“I’ve gotta start walking to the bus.”   
  
“Dad left me the keys to the truck. I’ll drive you.”  
  
Sam didn’t argue and took advantage of the extra time to enjoy a second breakfast and some of Dean’s coffee—its bitterness barely held at bay with five spoonfuls of sugar and a cup of milk. The May morning was already hot, hazy sun streaming through the windows, baking the kitchen, so he poured the mixture over ice, earning a disgusted snort from his brother.  
  
“Sorry we can’t afford to stop at Starbucks there, Francis. I don’t even think you can call that coffee any more.”  
  
Sam was so relieved that Dean seemed to have forgiven him that he bit back a _Bite me_ in favor of “Whatever.” The caffeine cleared away the last of the cobwebs.   
  
During the thirty minute drive to the school where the test was being held, Dad’s all news station was the only sound in the truck. Even Dean didn’t dare screw with Dad’s radio in the truck, despite the constant repetition of the forecast. Severe thunderstorms were expected, possibly before noon, with high winds, damaging hail, flash flooding, etc. Another spring day in the Midwest.   
  
Sam was afraid to say anything to damage the fragile peace between them. He’d had to be the one to start any physical contact since Heather’s party and it even that had been too quick, though the fact that Dad had been around probably was the reason for that. He really wished he could remember everything that had happened when he was drunk. Something definitely had, but Dean wouldn’t talk about it. Big freaking surprise.  
  
Dean joined the line of cars dropping off fellow victims. Sam felt his stomach knot in a way that had nothing to do with the ipecac and everything to do with the test: his whole future in a bunch of number two lead circles. As Sam shoved open his door, Dean said, “So this test has, what, a verbal section, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Might wanna work on some verbal skills in the next five minutes.”  
  
“Bite me.”  
  
The knot in his stomach loosened.   
  
“Kick ass, Sammy.”   
  
Sam slammed the door shut and waved.   
  
 

* * *

  
  
Dean drove past the pool hall on the way back through town, trying to decide if he should triple some of the cash Dad had given him or just pick up more milk to replace what Sam had used to ruin his coffee with this morning when the beeping warning came over the radio, a tornado watch for the county.   
  
Dean hated tornados. They weren’t anything you could fight, you just had to get out of their way, and they were more unpredictable than the ghost of some dude with Alzheimer’s. And he especially hated the idea of a tornado when Sam wasn’t somewhere he could keep him safe. Their trailer didn’t have a cellar, of course, but there should be one at the school. It was only a watch, not the warning, but there was never much warning with tornados. He u-turned in the middle of 3rd Street, setting off a chorus of blaring horns.   
  
 

* * *

  
  
Sam finished a reading comprehension section early and looked up from his paper, twisting his neck to get the kinks out. He glanced at the window and his mouth fell open in astonishment to see Dean there. Dean hooked his thumb in a universal gesture for “Let’s go.”  
  
Sam glanced up at the proctor and back at the window by his side. He shook his head, pointing at the test.   
  
Dean made some kind of weird spinning motion with his index finger, mouthing something. Sam could feel the proctor’s eyes on him and looked back at his paper, a flash of motion at the corner of his eye telling him Dean had ducked out of sight.   
  
A few seconds later the door opened and another adult came in. He had a principal kind of look, all suit and tie on a Saturday, but Sam couldn’t be sure since it wasn’t his school. The principal murmured in the proctor’s ear. Her mouth widened in an _o_ and her face got a little pale. She looked at her watch. The principal stepped away.   
  
The first break had Sam up and out of the classroom before anyone else moved. He really wasn’t surprised when he got dragged backwards into a neighboring room as soon as he hit the hall.   
  
He turned on Dean, who was locking the closet door behind him.  
  
“I knew it. I knew you couldn’t let me have this.”   
  
Dean felt the wave of Sam’s anger hit him like a blow.   
  
“Have what, Sammy?”  
  
“A life. A future.” Sam was pressing him back against the door, shoving at his shoulders in anger and frustration as if forcing Dean through solid oak was going to fix everything that was fucked up in his world.   
  
Dean didn’t fight back, just let him smash him into the door. “Sammy, there’s a tornado on the way. No one’s gonna have a future if we don’t get them to safety.”  
  
“No. That doesn’t happen here.”  
  
Sam wasn’t making any sense, but his face looked like it was a breath away from shattering and Dean reached for his head only to have his hand knocked away.   
  
“Not here. Saving people and danger, that’s not happening here. Jesus, Dean, just let me do this one thing.”  
  
“This isn’t some joke. There’s a tornado watch . . .”  
  
“Is that all?” Sam released him and stepped back. “They have them all the time. Do you have any idea how important this is to me?”  
  
“You think I don’t? You think I don’t know what this is all about? Christ, Sam, you’ve been running for the door since you learned how to stand.” How many times had he grabbed him and pulled him back?  
  
“That’s not it.”  
  
“Really? Sure sounds like it.”  
  
“Dean, if there’s really some dangerous storm coming, they’ll move us to safety.”  
  
“Sam, these people don’t even know enough to lock their doors at night. What makes you think they can protect anybody?”   
  
Sam came closer, chin jutting out. Dean wanted to roll his eyes at that but like every other time, the soft wet look in his brother’s eyes hooked him.   
  
“It’s just one test. Two more hours.”  
  
Sam was breaking out the I’m-reasonable-you’re-a-fucking-lunatic tone now, and Dean was seriously considering knocking him out and dragging him from the school, puppy eyes or no.   
  
“I’m not trying to keep you from doing this. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”  
  
“By keeping me from doing this.”   
  
Well, at least Sam had shed the “reasonable” tone.   
  
“No.”  
  
Sam took a deep breath, and Dean watched him wrinkle his nose. The janitor’s closet reeked of mold and disinfectant, kind of a hopeless smell, like no matter what, mold and rot were gonna win.   
  
Then Sam did something completely unexpected. He leaned forward and kissed him, just long enough for Dean’s pulse to speed up under the familiar rush of _god, Sammy, want you so bad._  
  
“Two hours.” Sam unlocked the door. “I’ll be fine. But you’d better make sure Dad’s truck is safe.” Sam peered into the hall through the door crack before slipping out and shutting it behind him.   
  
Dean dropped his head back against the door. Well, he’d wanted to know just how serious Sammy was about this. He certainly had his answer. But he still wasn’t leaving him here with floor-to-ceiling windows. Hadn’t anyone gotten a weather report yet?  
  
 

* * *

  
  
It was impossible, stupid and seriously girly of him to imagine he could still feel Dean’s lips against his. But despite that distraction, the next segment of the test was almost too easy. He remembered all his mathematical formulas, completed the stupid sentences and was almost looking forward to the next section when the door opened and Dean came in.  
  
He had on a sport jacket that barely fit over his shoulders and a pair of half glasses, both no doubt lifted from one of the classrooms. Around his neck hung a laminated badge, an all-purpose identification as “Staff.”   
  
Sam was going to fucking kill him.   
  
The proctor looked at Dean with relief in her eyes. He leaned over and murmured something, and she nodded and then hit the door like she’d been thrown at it. Sam could hear her heels clattering down the hall.   
  
“All right,” Dean turned to face them. “So—uh—put your pencils down.”   
  
There was a clatter of pencils and a murmur of confusion.   
  
“Yeah, there’s a tornado we’re going to be following emergency . . . plans.”   
  
It was beyond weird to watch kids his age respond to Dean like he was actually a teacher. If he wasn’t so fucking pissed off, he’d be laughing. Dean, even with the too small sport coat and glasses, looked about as much like a teacher as . . .   
  
Dean caught his eye and smirked. His brother loved getting away with shit like this and Sam almost responded with a matching grin before he remembered what Dean’s little stunt was going to cost him.   
  
“So now, everyone just—uh—follow me to the basement, we’ll—”  
  
“Excuse me, sir.”  
  
Sam didn’t recognize the kid who’d spoken, but he almost swallowed his tongue to hear his brother addressed as “sir.”   
  
The kid kept speaking. “We don’t have a basement.”  
  
_Well, that was fucking terrific_ , Dean thought. Who the hell built a school, a school for Chrissakes, in the Midwest without a basement? When he’d gone back to the truck for the generic id, one look at the freaky sky and the way the trees were snapping had him sprinting back to the school. Now this kid was telling him there wasn’t a basement to get to.  
  
Everyone’s eyes were now shifting to the windows and the way the trees were bending almost in half.   
  
“So, where do you go when there’s a tornado warning.”  
  
“The gym,” the kid who’d designated himself Mr. Helpful said.   
  
“The gym?”  
  
“It doesn’t have windows.”  
  
“It’s the tallest fuckin’ building here.”   
  
The kid’s mouth dropped open. “Did you just say—”  
  
“Yeah, I did. All right. Everybody to the gym.” His shoulder ached like a bitch from the sudden drop in air pressure. “Now, we gotta go.” He felt the familiar rush of adrenalin. This was going to be bad.   
  
“Look at that sky!” One of the kids practically had his nose pressed against the window.   
  
“For Chrissakes, into the hall. Get away from the fucking windows. Sam!”   
  
His brother was helping him herd everybody toward the door when the noise burst over him like a freight train roaring down the tracks.   
  
“Now.” He shouted again. “Get down.”   
  
He dove for his brother but he couldn’t get there in time. Sam dropped,pulling a girl down underneath him to shield her. Dean ended up in front of the kid who’d had his stupid nose pressed to the window. Just as he ducked his head between his shoulders the windows shattered, the sound of splintering glass almost completely swallowed by the roar of the wind. The building shuddered and moaned, but it didn’t go anywhere. Dean counted under his breath. The blast lasted for about a minute, followed by the rain, rain like an overturned lake pouring in over the shards of glass and tree branches that had flown in.   
  
“Sam?” He shook the glass off his back and crawled over to his brother.   
  
“I’m good, check the people in the hall.”   
  
Dean picked his way into the hall and looked out. The wind had stilled. The kids who had made it out of the room were huddled on the floor against the lockers. “Everybody okay?”  
  
Nods all around.   
  
Dean ducked back into the room. As Sam helped the girl he’d protected to her feet, the other five or six kids who’d been stuck in the room made a beeline for the hall. Dean tromped over soggy test papers as he made his way over to his brother. “I think we’re in the clear for now, but—fucking hell, Sam!” Blood was trickling down his cheek, another gash leaked on his arm and the back of his shirt glittered, holes showing skin. Dean shoved a desk out of his way and grabbed Sam’s bleeding arm. “You said you were fine.”   
  
The girl shrank away, either from his anger or the sight of blood and bolted for the hall.  
  
“I am.”   
  
“You’re cut to hell.”   
  
“I’m fine.”   
  
“Sam, look, the test is pretty much over. You can stop saying that.”   
  
“Yeah. I got that.” Sam’s laugh seemed to catch in his throat.   
  
Dean heard a man’s voice in the hall, all deep and full of authority. _Where were you five minutes ago when the wall came in, jackass?_  
  
“I’m gonna have to split. You want first aid at home or you staying here to let them take you to the hospital?”  
  
Sam didn’t even stop to think. “Home.”   
  
“Then let’s go.”   
  
Clearly even Mother Nature knew better than to fuck with Dad’s truck. Half a forest seemed leveled in front of the school, but Dad’s truck was fine. The minivan in front of it had grown a tree through its roof.   
  
The storm had eased, low thunder rolling in minute long echoes in the distance, the rain just soaking no longer blinding. He heard Sam wince as the water splashed into his cuts, made him stop at the truck to tie a few bandages on, but nothing looked like it was going to need stitches. He’d need the glass picked out of a couple of places on his shoulders, though. And he had no idea how he was going to get him home in the truck when there wasn’t any place but the bed for him to lay down in.   
  
In the end, he wadded up the suit coat at the base of Sam’s spine to keep him pressed forward and drove home as slowly as possible.   
  
Sam made a couple of grunts of pain when they hit a particularly large bump or swerved around a downed tree, but that was it. He was hoping to find the trailer still standing.   
  
The radio told them that the front had moved east, into Clay county, the trailer was west from the school. When Dean turned down their road, the wheels crunched over a layer of hail, but the trailer didn’t look any more beat up than it had when they’d left it this morning.   
  
He came around to Sam’s side and pulled out the coat so Sam could get out without scraping his back. The cut on his forearm had stopped bleeding, and there was blood in his hair and on his cheek, but that was dried. What worried Dean was his back.   
  
He dragged a chair over to the kitchen sink and grabbed the lantern from Dad’s truck for light cause sure as shit there was no power.   
  
Sam was already washing the gash on his arm, starting a fresh flow of blood. When he finished, he laid it on the counter in front of Dean without comment. The cut was deep, but straight, the edges nice and tight together.  
  
“No stitches, but you know how you are with infections.”  
  
“Just do it.” Sam’s teeth were already clenched.   
  
Dean poured the peroxide in it, wincing as he listened to the suck and press of breath behind Sam’s pursed lips.   
  
A layer of antibiotic ointment, gauze and tape and he was reaching for a towel to wash Sam’s face.   
  
“I’m not five any more, Dean.” Sam grabbed at the towel.  
  
“I still need to look at that cut.” Dean wrestled it free and soaked it under the running water. “Sit, jackass.”  
  
Sam sat with his chest against the chair back, facing the sink. Dean carefully wiped away the dried blood searching for the source.  
  
“I don’t want any freaking peroxide in my hair.”  
  
“Better that than Nair, eh, Sammy?”  
  
“Ha ha.”  
  
“C’mon, bro, you’d make a cute blonde. Aw, look, it isn’t even in your precious hair.”  
  
Sam’s fingers came up to check the small slice. It was high on his cheek, just below his temple.   
  
“Barely needs a band aid,” Dean pronounced. “You’ll still be a pretty boy.”   
  
“Not as pretty as you.”  
  
“Damn right.” Dean felt like he’d just taken his first full breath since he’d heard that warning on the radio. Sammy was gonna be all right, but . . . “Your back’s gonna be a bitch, Sammy,” he finished the thought aloud.  
  
“You’re tellin’ me.”  
  
“Maybe you should have worn a jacket.”  
  
“Man, it was eighty this morning. And you looked like an idiot in that thing.” Sam lifted his shirt at the hem, but it stuck.   
  
“No I didn’t. I looked hot. That lady giving the test was eyeing me.”   
  
“She was terrified, Dean. That’s why she was happy to see you.” Sam tugged the shirt again, wincing.   
  
“You want me to cut it off?”  
  
“Just rip it.” Sam’s teeth were clenched again.   
  
Dean grabbed it at the neck and hem. “Ready? One, two—” He yanked, Sam cursed, and the t-shirt took a little blood and skin as it came tearing free.   
  
Sam leaned forward, resting his hands on the edge of the sink, and Dean gave him a minute to catch his breath before wiping the dried blood away. There were dozens of tiny cuts, and one or two deep ones that glittered with fragments of glass still inside.   
  
Dean selected the tweezers from the first aid kit and doused them with peroxide. He braced Sam with a hand on his neck as he dug the first piece out.   
  
“What’re you going to tell Dad?” Sam managed between grunts.   
  
“Am I going to tell him you doped yourself to stay back to take a test and then didn’t have the sense to get shelter from a fucking tornado?” The glass went in the garbage and blood pulsed from the cut. Dean glared at it as if he could stop the leak of his brother’s blood with Superman’s heat vision. “What do you think?”  
  
Sam started to shrug and then thought better of it.   
  
“I’m going to tell him the truth. We heard the warning, were on our way to the shelter and you played hero and got cut by flying glass from a broken window.” Dean probed for the next piece. “Shoulda gotten that chick’s name.”  
  
“Thanks, Dean.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever. I’d be in more trouble’n you anyway.” He swung the lantern as close as he could get and found another piece in a spot just under Sam’s left shoulder blade.   
  
“Man, this sucks.”   
  
“You want a shot of whiskey?”  
  
“Not that. The test. I know I was nailing it.”  
  
“The test?” Dean felt his teeth almost nip his tongue as he snapped the word.   
  
“Yeah. And then it all went to hell.”   
  
“Well, I didn’t bring a tornado to school on purpose just to screw up your plans, Sammy.” He had to stop and grab the counter for a second to steady his hands.   
  
“I know that. It’s just . . .” Sam sighed like he was going to grow breasts any second. “They only give the tests around here a couple times a year.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Sam, I’ll drive you into Chicago for the next one if I have to. Just don’t be such an ass about it, okay?”  
  
Sam went quiet for a minute, his head dropping into the sink. “I’m sorry I freaked out on you. I—uh—should have believed you about the storm.”  
  
“Yeah, you should have.” But Sam’s apology didn’t change a goddamn thing. Sam was still planning on college, on leaving. Looking at a future without Sam there was like standing on the edge of a cliff, staring down into a bottomless black and just knowing he was about to fall.   
  
He got his hands under control and brought the light close to Sam’s skin again. The cuts were barely oozing, time for cleaning.   
  
“You need a peroxide shower, dude.” His voice sounded tighter than it should have.   
  
Sam swung up from the chair and leaned over the sink, holding his hair up against his scalp. Dean stepped up behind him, grabbed the bottle and put a hand on Sam’s neck again to keep him still. The peroxide fizzed into the first cut and Sam gasped.   
  
And that was just fucking sick. His gasp of pain sounded just like the gasp he made when Dean wrapped his hand around his dick. And pressing over him like this, his own cock right in Sam’s ass, holding him down with his body, his hand. He fought off the boner that his body was trying to spring because no. Not happening.   
  
What if it did? What if he yanked down Sam’s jeans and fucked him the way he’d been begging for it. Tore into him until he was crying and begging him to stop. Would that change his mind? Would he stay or just run faster?   
  
What the fuck else did he have to give him? There wasn’t any of him Sam didn’t already have. What did he have left to offer?  
  
He splashed the peroxide on as fast as he could and stepped away, his hand shooting up into his hair, fingers digging deep. He had to get out of there.   
  
“Dean.”   
  
He couldn’t look at him. Because he didn’t know what was gonna happen if he did. What if he begged him to stay? What if he fucked him and gave him a good reason to leave?  
  
The breath just wouldn’t fit right in his lungs.   
  
“Dean. Talk to me.”  
  
Sam was too fucking close. How did he get so fucking close?   
  
“Need more gauze.” He didn’t let himself see Sam as he shoved him away on his way to the bathroom.   
  
Of course Sam followed him. Because he clearly had no idea how close he was to getting his ass kicked as Dean chose the least of the evils chasing each other in his head.   
  
And now he was blocking the door.   
  
“Dean. It was just a test. It doesn’t mean anything.”  
  
He shoved Sam to the side and the towel rack crashed to the ground as Sam hit it. Sam sucked in a tight breath.   
  
“Really, Sam? Because I know what the SAT’s are. Taking the college boards _means_ you want to go to college. Insisting on taking them when there’s a fucking tornado on the way _means_ you’re pretty goddamned serious about it. So don’t treat me like I’m some fucking moron. I know what you want.”  
  
“You don’t.” Sam came off the wall and right back in his face. “You can’t.”  
  
“Try me.”  
  
“I want something different with my life.”  
  
“Different.” Dean felt guilt tie his intestines in a knot. He’d known Sam was too young, he never should have let things get this far.   
  
“I don’t want to live like this forever. I don’t want to be so goddamned scared all the time. I don’t want to be here when Dad comes home some night without you.”  
  
“Sam.”   
  
“And I want you to come with me.”  
  
“You know I can’t.”  
  
“Yes, you can.”   
  
Sam was so close he could taste his breath, smell peroxide and blood, rain and sweat.  
  
“You can.” Sam leaned in and kissed him.  
  
“Sam.” Dean put up a hand to keep him back.   
  
Sam strained past his block and kissed him again, working down his jaw to his ear when his lips didn’t soften. He couldn’t. Because every time they did this it just made that cliff he was standing on that much higher. And then the memory of holding Sam down, pressing against his ass hit him like a fist to the gut and his knees buckled. He had to get out of here. Now.   
  
Sam’s mouth and tongue were right under his ear, found that spot like there was a big black x on it. Shit. His hand shifted from Sam’s chest to his shoulder.   
  
“Don’t.”   
  
“Please, Dean.”   
  
Sam dropped to his knees in front of him and he wasn’t going anywhere.   
  
“Sammy, don’t.” He could barely hear his whisper over the purr of his zipper. “I can’t.” But he didn’t stop him when he shoved his jeans over his hips, eased his shorts over his swelling dick.   
  
Sam’s long fingers stroked him, the touch almost as soft as a girl’s. His fingers teased the head, the calluses all Sam, the way he could find the right spot just under the crown to rub and press all Sam, too.   
  
Sam brought the head against his lips, wet them both with a long sweep of his tongue. “You can,” he said again. “You can’t hunt forever.”   
  
But there wasn’t anything else. Hunting was the right thing to do. It was what he knew. What he was raised to do. It was Dad and Sam and _them_ and hunting was fun. If he couldn’t have hunting and Sam . . .   
  
“Sammy. Don’t.” _Don’t. God, don’t make me choose._ Sam licked the underside of his dick, flicked a tender spot with his tongue and Dean felt everything shake: what he knew, what he wanted, every muscle in his body.   
  
“Can’t we have this?” Sam asked.   
  
_Not if you’re gonna leave me._ But his dick had other plans, sliding right between his brother’s lips like a knife into its sheath. Perfect. Home. Safe.   
  
He reached down and cradled Sam’s head. He was going to pull him off, he was. But Sam’s hand stroked his dick in just the right time with the bob of his head and his hands threaded through Sam’s hair and held him there. Right there.   
  
Sam groaned, sank down, so wet on him, mouth hot and soft and _moving_ , shifting, the pressure increasing as Sam took him deep. Dean panted and Sam pulled back to tongue the head again, and then mouthed a path to his balls. The soft suck was just on the sweet side of too much sensation.   
  
And then everything was going down. His legs couldn’t hold him up any more. He let go of Sam’s head to slump against the wall. His whole body was sliding down into Sam’s mouth. The mouth which released his balls and moved lower, a firm hand lifting his balls out of the way so Sam could tongue beneath them and Dean prayed he was going to have the strength to stop him before he went too far.   
  
Sam did something that made that tight stretch of skin vibrate and a something that might have been begging got strangled in his throat until it came out as a random grunt. Sam must have understood him though, because he did it again, one hand working his balls, the other jerking his cock.   
  
Sam mouthed his way back up his cock and teased the slit before raising his head. His eyes found Dean’s, held them. “This is what I want, Dean.” His words rolled right over his dick, over the slick head, his lips rubbing against him as he spoke. “This. You. In me.” He laid the flat of his tongue over him. “Please. Tell me.”  
  
There was nothing left of him to fight it. “Yeah. Finish it.”   
  
Dean bucked once, helpless against that intense rush of need to fuck now. His need, Sam’s need. Sam moaned around the head of his dick, tongue everywhere, hand twisting around the base. The sensations rolled through him, rolled over that horrible empty hole inside that this entire fucked up day had dug, filled it, flooded it and he came with a tight quick jerks of his hips. Sam’s mouth swallowed around him, tongue pressing him up into his mouth, and Dean could swear he just pulled more out of him with every suck.   
  
He crashed onto his knees and Sam was on top of him, pushing him onto his back. Dean managed to get his hand between their bodies, to find Sam’s cock still trapped beneath thick denim, and stroke him as best he could as Sam shuddered and rocked above him.   
  
His other hand wrapped around Sam’s waist, palm pressing on his ass as Sam drove against his belly and cramping hand, his brother’s soft groans turning into curses the closer he got to the edge. Dean watched his face like he had that first time, watched the blush and burn of pleasure in his cheeks, the dark glitter in his eyes, the way his mouth just went slack when he went over. Sucking Dean off, grinding against him had made Sam come like that and just knowing that made something warm flood inside him, like some kind of orgasm under his skin.   
  
He had to get up. He had to get out. He had to put as much distance between him and Sam as the crummy shoebox of a trailer would allow because if he didn't leave right now, he was going to cave. He’d have Sam pressed up against the sink, fuck him until they were both bloody and raw and that just couldn’t happen. No matter what Sam thought it was going to be, Dean knew better. He couldn’t do that to Sam. Or himself.  
  
His entire life he’d given Sammy exactly what he needed. Everything he needed. And still Sam wanted more. Wanted him to choose, wanted Dean to give him what could only hurt him.   
  
And he just . . . couldn’t.   
  
He pulled Sam’s head down and grabbed his mouth in a hard kiss, tongue diving in to find his own bitter taste still there. His thumbs stroked across Sam’s cheeks, down onto his jaw to hold his mouth open for his kiss.   
  
Sam pulled back, gasping for breath.   
  
“Look, Sam, whatever you’re going to do, just don’t be an ass about it, okay?” He held his face, thumbs rubbing back across his cheeks.   
  
Sam nodded.   
  
“And don’t think you’re going to always get away with shit because you know how to suck my dick, all right?”  
  
Sam smiled.   
  
That fucking smile made that made all the air go out of his lungs. “I mean it.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”   
  
“Dude, I can’t breathe. Get off me.”  
  
“Got you off.”  
  
“Sam.” Dean shoved him, and Sam rolled off landing on his hip.  
  
Sam laughed, until he looked at Dean’s face. “What?”   
  
It’d be great if Dean could believe everything was all better now. That an apology and a blowjob could fill in the space between them, but the bottom line was, Mom was gone, Dad was only ever half here, and Sam was leaving.   
  
The truth slammed home like the storm outside.   
  
He was going to be alone.   
  
“Just remember what I told you, Sammy.” He pulled up his pants and climbed to his feet. He looked back over his shoulder at Sam who was still sprawled on the floor with his brow all wrinkled like Dean was speaking in a language he couldn’t understand. “And help me check the roof. It’s going to rain again.”   
 


End file.
